two years * Suspension of the guaranteed working week, which gives about half BSC's workers at least 80 per cent * Temporarily closing some of the plants * Waiving of the cost-of-living pay rise due from 1 January.
The temporary occupations of the steel plants that have occurred are to resist the first stages of the attack on the guaranteed working week. The acBSC chief Scholey: self-styled hammer of the workers tions of workers in plants like Port Talbot went beyond what their local leaders had intended. There 100 reported for work and when their shift was cut 300 others, officially in work, went on strike and the afternoon shift did not report for duty.
Actions like this prompted the secschemes for work-sharing without loss of pay and a guaranteed week's earnings, can be fought for on the basis of this information. Those firms unable to meet the basic right of the workforce to a job and a decent standard of living should be nationalised on the basis of a work ers plan drawn up to defend jobs.
Within the nationalised industries themselves, work-sharing schemes with no loss of pay are the way to unite the whole workforce and link it up with the fight for jobs in the private sector.
Do not be fooled by the trade union 'leaders' who say there is no alternative to THE TUC
Red Weekly 8 January 1976